Ballmer Speaks on His Solo Act

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "In his first one-on-one interview since Bill Gates's retirement announcement, Steve Ballmer tells the Wall Street Journal he is bullish on Microsoft's investments in online services, and he dismisses as 'random malarkey' the idea that Microsoft is having trouble hiring and keeping the kind of brilliant employees that have always been the company's competitive weapon. Here's Ballmer on Gates's departure: 'As co-leaders of the business, I could allow Bill to be the full-time champion of innovation. And [now] with me really being the guy who's here every day running the place, I must be the champion of innovation.' And on competing with Google: 'We're going to compete. We're going to be in the online business. We are going to have a core around online. We're going to be excellent. That, I would tell people, to count on...'"

Comments

Re:Rather scary...

[mapkinase]

Tanks have nothing to do with Chinese economy. At least nothing bad. Political students are stupid. Instead of learning how to do big bucks, they dragged their idealistic buttocks to the Tiananmen. It is sad that they died, but it was stupid and pointless to go there nonetheless. It is very likely (judging by what I heard from my Chinese high-tech coworkers) that their cause is supported by 0.1% of Chinese population.

Who needs political freedoms when they have economical ones? Who needs freedom of expression when China is making US, Europe and pretty much the rest of the world economy-wise?

They will beat all the multi-pound "freedom above all" ancient dust out of the old sag of an American furcoat if we will continue clinging to stupid political freedom and file-sharing issues.

US needs to wake up to become more competitive. The days of our technoadvantage are counted. Boeng will go down the tube the same way the world computer manufacturing is bowing to yellow assemblies now, and automakers are going to do the same in their industry.

"It is economy, stupid".